Episode #549: Growing an Industry Newsletter-Ed Hertzman's Path from Sourcing to Athletech News

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I am super excited to announce that we now have a formal partnership

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it allows a visitor to call, text, or leave a voice mail.

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Immediately goes to you, your sales team, or anyone else in the club

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instantly. MIT shows a study that if you contact the lead

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within ten minutes, chance of them converting goes up nine times

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that of the average. We got the Atlanta clubs on it, Vida

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Fitness, Gold's Gym, Mountainside, City Fitness

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Philly, College Park. Become one of the

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next halo companies to deploy the wizard. It's easy to

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up and let the leads flow based on the wizard.

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Go get them.

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This is Pete Moore at Hilo Talks NYC. I have the pleasure of bringing on

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a fellow New Yorker, Upritty Snyder, Ed Hertzmann,

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Athlete Tech News. We are partnering with them in several

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fronts. We're really excited about where he's taking this because we're taking the

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events, and we're basically putting it on legal steroids. So,

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Ed, welcome to the Halo sector, and thanks for coming in. Thanks for

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having me, Pete. Awesome. So, look, you worked in some other different

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industries that have kind of pivoted here recently, which was a nice refreshing,

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dose of, enthusiasm from our standpoint. So talk

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about where you were before, what opportunities you you uncovered and

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executed on, and why you said, hey. I should do this in the Halo sector.

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So, you know, I was a supply chain guy. You know, I've told

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this this this story a couple of times, and it's partly

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serendipitous and part of it maybe just be at the right place at the right

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time. But supply chain guy who went 02/2009, there was a cotton

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crisis, and no one really knew what was going on. I was frustrated. I was

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26. None of my buyers really wanted to accept that if they didn't place an

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order on a Monday, by Tuesday, there'd be an upcharge. So I'm like, where's the

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Wall Street Journal of supply chain? So I started this thing called sourcing journal.

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Never did I think that it would have, you know, morphed into this

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substantial business and a thorn in some of the more traditional media

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publications out there. So I ended up selling that to Penske Media

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Group, and, you know, they gave us such credibility. They

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gave us, you know, obviously, a financial you know, a lot of credit that was

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much needed. And, more importantly, they taught me really

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about how some of these big media companies operate, especially on the b two b

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side. I got exposed to the billboard and the varieties, etcetera, etcetera. And that

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was really the inspiration. Like, okay. Every single industry

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has their publication or record. I remember sitting in

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Vegas. This is this is not owned by by Penske, but I was sitting

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at at a table and, oh, what are you guys doing here? They were here

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for a pizza conference. And there was, like, 10,000 pepperoni salesman.

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And there was a pizza magazine and pizza this. I'm like, I'm

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always looking for the white space. I'm looking for the underserved community that that

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maybe, you know, maybe it's not the biggest the biggest

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business necessarily, but it's but it's it's but it's real business, and and they're

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looking for a home. And I just thought there was such a convergence between

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technology, finance, fitness, wellness, all this stuff going on. And

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the players that were out there at the time just weren't it's almost like

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Tower Records. Right? Like, there were great businesses, but you can't sell

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DVDs in the streaming market. And the market was moving to streaming, and everyone else

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was selling DVDs. So okay. Let's let's create the, the, you

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know, the I the iPod or iPad, whatever the hell it was

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called. And and that was really it. I mean and the rest is history.

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Yep. So she'd been doing this I mean, we we got on your radar screen

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probably about two years ago. And I've know it kinda started

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out, you know, you know, more as a as a newsletter.

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And now you've kinda moved it into two events, and now you're kinda going big.

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So could you just kinda highlight those points? Because I

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think people sometimes start a business, and they kinda say, hey. Let

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me go and do this event that we're gonna talk about that you're doing in

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in, you know, in New York City with with some big hitters and

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kinda reframing what the event should be and what people getting out of it.

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But it was kinda nice to start here, you know, and then be able to

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say, hey. You know who I am, and I'm gonna get to here.

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Look. You know, overnight success, it could be ten years. You know? For the first

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two years, I was emailing myself, and no one really cared about what I was

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doing or who I was, but I saw a steady growth and growth and growth,

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and people would, hey. Can you feature us? Hey. Can you write about us? Oh,

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can we average? Woah. And so, you know, how many times I

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wanted to give up on this thing? You know, I was I was a president

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of a division. I had a great income, and I would go home at night

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and and post stories and load them into Mailchimp. I was kinda going back to

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the 26 year old self, you know, starting Yeah. Sourcing journal. And so

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but it was it was progress compounds as long as I kept seeing that list

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go up and the feedback increase. And then

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I had to make a decision, and that's a very, very hard decision. And I

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realized that, what do

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they say? You can't dance at two weddings. Right? So so I knew that I

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needed to go all in, and I knew that I had to not

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not just have the a very clear vision of or the goal, but what was

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I willing to sacrifice? So I knew that I was gonna take a couple years

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of of of hardship necessarily before I would get to a place

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where this would even be considered a business and not, you know, just a

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just. And the last two years has really transfer trans

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transformative. I mean, we started 02/20, what, '4 with 50,000

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subscribers, ended the year with over a hundred thousand.

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And I had the intention of doing an event in '24. And I will tell

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you, I remember being out there looking at venues, and it was a movie. I

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I think it was called Chasing Bobby Fischer or something like that.

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Yep. And there was a line in the movie. Don't move it till you could

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see it. Don't move it till you could see it. And I said, you know

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what? I don't think we're ready yet. I don't have in my phone

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50, a hundred CEOs that I could put on auto dial

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or speed dial and say, hey. Do me a solid and come. And I and

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I knew that I was gonna introduce an event to the market.

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I wanted to solve the problem or solve

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what the you hear the same feedback. Oh, there's the same speakers. There's too much

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pay to play. There's not enough brands. There's too many vendors. The production

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quality, outside voices. So if I'm gonna sit there and say, okay.

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I can do that. I gotta make sure I could deliver on that. And I

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thought it was better to wait, a year

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or eighteen months and really get ready and then go all in

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when I felt more comfortable. Although that meant there was revenue that I was leaving

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on the table, events is a is a big part of the media company. It's

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where a lot of media companies actually make it make make their their their money

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for the year. But I said, let's keep building the reputation. Let's keep building

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the name. One of the one of the things that I think a lot of

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people do wrong in business in general is they call them the favors too

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early. They overpromote too early,

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and then you lose the you lose your customer's trust.

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This is Pete Moore. I wanna let you in on a little secret. There's this

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company called Promotion Vault, and what they do is they give out rewards from

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retailers that allow you to incentivize your

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members without having to do zero down and one month

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free or giving away shakes or giving away T shirts. What

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you wanna do is build a rewards program that lasts, that

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people value, and that doesn't discount your own products and services.

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So here's the deal. There's something called rewards vault. The rewards

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vault is going to allow a member to set up their own profile.

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They are going to answer questions. You are gonna get those answers. You're gonna be

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able to target those members, and you're gonna reward them inside your

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club, inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside

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of the spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay

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their monthly dues, and to be rewarded properly for

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the actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't

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be. Promotion Vault's your answer. Trust me. This is real.

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So on some of the newsletters that you're putting out, you know,

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you're featuring technology. You're talking about deals. There's

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a financial component to it. Is is that distribution

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of your, you know, audience right now, are they

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consuming all components of it? Because this

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industry somehow sometimes very siloed between, like, who the

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executive is and, like, what information they actually know or care about or obviously should

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know all of it. But Well, look. I think what we're doing today and what

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what the vision I see for this in the future is gonna be slightly different.

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Right now, you know, we have that that general news call or email that goes

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out every single day. And

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I think it's kind of the top stories that the industry kinda if you're an

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executive across the board, probably about 50% of

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that's gonna pertain to you. Obviously, some stories are gonna lean more to finance, are

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gonna be loaned into training, or more into wellness. But if I'm an executive

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running x, y, and z company, here is something that gives me enough

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information to so that I can be intelligent, informed on

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what's going on, and could speak to to the industry in the in the industry

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news. Do I see a world where we have

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newsletters catered to the CEO, the CTO, the CMO, the

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the wellness executive, the longevity, the enthusiast. Absolutely. That

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also allows you to get more more

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granular in your content, but also from an advertising perspective, your advertisers

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can now be more targeted and get exactly who they want. About

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60% of who we currently have as subscribers are what I would say are the

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owner and operators. You know? So that's the largest cohort.

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Now, again, statistics are skewed, and you know this

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better than anybody. What is there?

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500 top m and a, PE

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analysts in this space. So what percentage of my list can that be? It's gonna

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be very small. So I do I think we are talking to them? Absolutely.

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How is that going to be as a percentage when compared to

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operators? It's gonna be smaller. Yeah. Sure. The service providers, the equipment companies,

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all of that is changing. But I think what's interesting and what I'm seeing is

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the nontraditional players are are starting to subscribe

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and become part of the conversation. What I mean by that

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is fitness is not just a full wall gym and a treadmill.

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You know? There is, you know, like, we have

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the head of, wellness at Chase Travel joining

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us at our event. Travel now,

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you know, twenty years ago when we we went on a vacation, is it in

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a free buffet, and is there maybe a, you know, a pool? Now people

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are really is is there a fitness facility? And a fitness facility

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doesn't mean weights and a treadmill. People wanna know is there recovery options, you know,

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what type of equipment do the gyms have. So now if you're in the hospitality

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sector, you have to rethink what it means to be

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to have fitness and wellness as an amenity. Is that a new generator? Is

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that a cost center? Etcetera, etcetera. So but how do we bring

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in the people that are making these decisions or hear the data on a day

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to day basis? I always say that if you wanna talk about wellness trends, how

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do we bring in some of the social media giants who are who have billions

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of data points who really know what the Gen z's are searching for every single

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day? Yeah. So I think that we're starting to see

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non endemic players consume this content, which is really, really encouraging.

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You're seeing innovation, happen at

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at at large scale companies that never played in wellness per se.

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These venture studios are popping up. So there's a lot of momentum, and we

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have to almost I know you guys call it halo, and I and I and

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I love that you guys are doing that because I don't think there is a

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term that probably encompasses the

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fitness, the wellness, the health, the longevity, the recovery. Exactly. I

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mean, that's that's what happened basically eight years ago. I kept

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telling people I'm a health and wellness banker, and I hated using the term wellness.

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And I could I it's just I never get an awesome wellness idea that ever

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hit my desk. Okay? Ever. And,

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and I'm like, well, where's this word come from? You probably don't even know, but

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I'll tell you now. So back in the fifties, there was a guy named doctor

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Halbert Dunn who worked at the Mayo Clinic. He was a biostatistician.

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He was looking at all the data, seeing that people get sick, and basically

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came up with the antonym of illness. So if you're not sick,

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you're okay. Right? That's basically what wellness means. Like, you're okay.

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You're not sick. Right? Not very aspirational for anybody who works

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in this industry such as you and we're passionate about getting people

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results. So I literally woke up at 03:00 in the morning. I'm like, shit dude,

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the word halo, the acronym health, active lifestyle, and outdoors.

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Right? It kinda compasses a resort. Right? That's outdoor activity. I wanna

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live an active lifestyle. Health. Alright. I gotta list data in science.

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Well, it should be preventative health, not just like I mean, like, the sick

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continuum of, like, how I might be able to get better. So we'd

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love you to to to embrace the term. I'm going all in on it. Obviously,

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I do a halo academy, which you know about. Mhmm. Got the halo talks. And

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I'm trying to basically tell all these companies, you are part of the halo sector.

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Now you have to jump in because everybody who is an enthusiast in

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enthusiast in this industry is is is one of your potential, you

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know, revenue streams, dispensable, you know, disposable income available,

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and they travel. They're on the move all the time. So I appreciate you bringing

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that up as it relates to, like, what you're doing and your broader vision.

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I think it's very smart because I I think that that we're all struggling to

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figure out, you know, how do we identify the sector? Because if you use fitness,

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it's almost limiting, and it's almost has, like, a negative connotation. If you say health,

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well, we're not talking about hip replacements and and dialysis.

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You know? Right. So so what is the intersection of all this? And there's one

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other thing I'll add, and and you'll probably appreciate this as as,

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you know, as as a former banker is that what the

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other major Or current or current, unfortunately. Current. Sorry. Unfortunately.

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What I think was missing from most of the conversations that

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I saw on the outside was there was no lack of

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enthusiasm. There was no lack of ideas. There was no lack of passion

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in this industry. There was a lack of

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commentary and analysis on, which is what you guys do, on the deals that are

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happening. So I'm always interested, like, okay. This is a good

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product. Like, this this is not my favorite cup of

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coffee, but Starbucks has has a pretty

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sizable business. You know what I mean? Like, Schultz was able to really

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take an idea and scale it globally. And people study this. These are these are

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case studies. People wanna understand what separates this from from the

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individual that has three or four locations and can't get back can't get past their

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neighborhood coffee shop. What processes has he been able to place? What

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challenges has they had? What when did they introduce food or things

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and they stumble? You know, the music they they they put in the store, does

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that have an impact on on the the the the the amount of money people

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spend? There's there's a lot of of things behind the scenes, and what I

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see is there's a lack of commentary on this. You know?

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Caterton buys Solid Core. Great. Who's doing the analysis on what

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was the EBITDA? Was this good? What does this mean for the rest of the

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industry? Is this gonna mean things are gonna trade higher? Things are gonna trade lower?

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What is Caterton's exit strategy on this? What is the growth strategy on this?

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Any other industry, if GE did something or IBM did

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something or or Macy's did something, we turn on CNBC, and they'd be pontificating

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about these things for for hours and hours because this is a largely

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publicly held, privately held, sorry, privately held

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sector. We don't know very much, and that's why I'm partnering with and

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this is gonna be, look, somewhat this you gotta be careful what you ask

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for. This is what the industry is asking for, so I'm gonna deliver it.

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Partnering with with with data companies, credit card companies,

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companies that are pinging cell phone towers, we're gonna have a level of data now

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that is gonna provide transparency into what are people

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spending. So what what modalities are trending? What brands are trending?

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Where are people spending their money? So there's gonna be less guessing

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as to what's working and not working. We're gonna be able to provide that.

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Some people are not gonna like that because they're able to hide it behind the

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guys of, hey. I'm gonna tell you whatever I wanna tell you, and it's up

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to you. So so, just rewind you for a

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second here. I'm happy to to officially announce that I'm

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available, as Integrity Square to provide you with these deal

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summaries as under your hood of, like, tell me actually

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not just like this company acquired this company and, like, you know,

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this management team staying on. Like, tell me actually, like, give me the inner workings

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of the deal. Like, how does it was this priced? You know, whether that's a

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rumor or based on estimates. Tell me why they're doing the deal. Did they take

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that financing out to do the deal? Are they looking to go public? And and

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basically, like, take one of your reporters, and then I'll and team

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up with us. And I'll give you, like, the metrics. Like, when does this thing

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fall, you know, in in all the last years? You know, why somebody paying 11

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times for a Planet Finish Area Developer when the last year was done at

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eight and a half times? Like, well, they had a lot more territory. They had

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a prototype generating next to a hundred and $50 of cash flow. And, you know,

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it's in this market, not this market. So I'm happy to do that on

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on record. And, you know, if we don't do it, we'll just edit it out

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later. So big deal. No. But I I I I love that idea, and and

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I think that's what we want more of. And I think that if if you

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ask me what is what is ATM gonna look like in second half of twenty

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five and and '26, it's more of that. I call it, you know, the ATM

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Pro or the ATM Plus. It it it's providing that level of data

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and that level of sophistication because I think that the industry is asking

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me for it, and the industry wants it. So let's see.

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Let's see if we provide it, how they consume it, and what they do with

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it. This is

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Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast.

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We are partnered up with a company called Higher Dose, higher dose

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dot com. They are the leader in workout

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recovery products, infrared technology, LED

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light masks, neck enhancers, and other

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products such as PEMF mats and sauna blankets.

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If you have not gotten on the workout recovery train

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yet, your time and your stop is now. You gotta

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get these products in there before these workout recovery and spas end

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up saturating your market, having your members walk out of the club and

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going into one of their locations for $200 per

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month where they're paying 39 to you. Let's become an

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00:18:37,380 --> 00:18:41,060
expert in workout recovery if we are already the authority in

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workouts. Higher dose, check it out, is a

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00:18:44,740 --> 00:18:48,340
wholesale code, and we look forward to helping

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you augment your products and services to meet the demands of your

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members. And, hey, let's get people happy, healthy,

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and sweating, and the recovery should be just as good as the workout.

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Okay. So in closing here, give us a little bit of, you know, high

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level tops and waves on the event that's gonna happen, in New

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York. You know, my team gets mad at me for for for

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using terms like this, and it it's probably you always wanna be,

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underselling, overdeliver, but I I have this vision. You know? It's

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funny. I again, I'm I'm taking a lot of liberty here. Is

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there there's, like, a famous quote or whatever. Disney, Walt took took his friend

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into the forest and said, what do you see? What do you mean? What are

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sassy trees? What are you seeing? He goes, I see the largest amusement park in

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the world. I I kinda have this vision. It's so it's so clear in

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my mind of, like, a Davos meets YPO

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meets Sun Valley for this industry a a day. And we and

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and and we teased it out a little bit in January at NASDAQ where

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you saw CEOs sitting in the audience. You

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saw big players on stage, everyone in a suit. You

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saw no one's selling to each other, people communicating, you know,

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and and staying there for nine hours throughout the day. And I'm like, okay.

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This is a sophisticated audience that's learning from each other,

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peer to peer networking, pre pre competitive collaboration, and they loved

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it. So I have this vision of

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bringing best speakers from around the world. Mhmm. Not just from

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our our, as you would say, the halo industry, but from outside industry so we

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all could learn. But being very, very intentional in how I

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curate this this information because if people are gonna come

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three, four, five people deep as an organization, what a founder wants, what a

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CTO wants, what a CFO wants, what the head of franchising wants, what the head

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of procurement wants is very different. So we're we're spending so much time to

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ensure that we are programming content that's been aligned with all

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that. Then we're gonna have our recovery lounge, which is part experiential

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and also part a place where people are gonna do their meetings. Because,

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hey, maybe you and I wanna sit down and, and

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put on these compression boots and and talk for thirty minutes. Then we're gonna have

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an expo. This is not to be confused with the trade show. This is not

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a place where people are gonna be bringing, you know, tons and tons of product

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discovery. You know, that's that's why HFA's and the FEMO's

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exist. But innovation, let's bring the best product you have, or let's

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let's this is your meeting place for the next two days, and we're gonna we're

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gonna try to do everything we can to

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this needs to be the CES. This needs to be once a year.

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Everyone's like, this is where the the money

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goes to to to congregate, to meet new concepts, to, you know,

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to potentially meet potential, you know, to find investment opportunities.

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This is where we go to learn. This is where people go to collaborate. This

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is where I go to discover new products, meet with new vendors. People are

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gonna be announcing. We have some proprietary research that's gonna be dropping. We're we're working

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with major consulting firms on on some data. We're working with data firms on on

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some stuff. My goal is that everyone as many people as possible use

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this June data as hey. As just the way at

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CES, they dropped something new there. People are gonna be dropping research and

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announcements around this. I'm really trying to get everyone to come together and make

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this, and it's bigger than us. Right? We're gonna have a lot of the moderators

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or from other, from other media outlets. This is not just

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about ATN. This is about bringing this entire industry up and

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getting exposure, not do it through our platform or be a conduit to get

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exposure for our industry and other platforms that maybe wouldn't be covering it.

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And I think if we do that, what do they say? At

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the top, you collaborate. At the bottom, you compete. So let let's think about

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Yeah. Let let's think about collaboration. Yep. That's great.

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We speak in our language and, and and appreciate you devoting your time

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and efforts here because we think it's fruitful, and there's a clear

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opportunity and frustrations that that have not been solved.

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From a standpoint of us getting involved, just to our audience, we're gonna be at

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the show, be sponsoring, one of the the programs there. Hopefully,

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there's a a halo, you know, banner that people start to resonate as as

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Ed's been referencing. You know, try to pull this together under one acronym that that

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fits for everyone. Also, we should introduce you to higher dose, David, if

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you can do that, to potentially be a sponsor. And also in the

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recovery lounge, we've got, some things there and also a sponsor for you

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guys, you know, longer term. And, you know, look forward to

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collaborating with you here, and, I think it's big, and we're excited. So thanks for

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coming on and, telling our audience what you guys are up to. No. I appreciate

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it, man. It's it's, it it's exciting times, and, I appreciate

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all your support. You

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got it.